A Stranger Is a Better Judge of Your Ideas Than You Are
When you pick the best of your own ideas, you tend to keep weaker ones that a stranger would drop, and a warning doesn't fix it.
Come On. This Is SNL, Right?
There are real issues to vote on, and the ones they want you to vote on.
PHP2Shell: ini won’t save you
Update, 16:00 CEST PHP published both advisories at 14:00 UTC. Fixed versions are 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35. Both are rated 9.2 with high attack complexity. CVE-2026-109619 needs a persistent…
LOTRO: Project Questa Update
I began work on Project Questa on the 27th of September, because I couldn’t get Khazad Voice TTS to work on my PC. Since then I’ve spent several days a week working on my AI narrator utility and have…
OVHcloud’s CLI Release Tags Didn’t Change. The Files Under Them Did.
Release tags on OVHcloud's CLI stayed the same while the binaries under them changed. What the incident shows about verifying what your pipelines fetch. The post OVHcloud’s CLI Release Tags…
hk-nix + ast-grep: Remove all comments
Here’s a git pre-commit hook for removing all comments that relies on hk-nix. It enforces the removal of all source code comments besides certain doc comments. In Rust, comments that begin with…
Cool alternative character or cool alternative timeline?
As a die-hard Doctor Who fan I suffered through the recent, dismal Disney + series that wasted the charm of Ncuti Gatwa as the first Doctor of color. I also read … The post Cool alternative…
Belfast Giants season is in full flow and here are the things we are picking up so far
The hockey season is well and truly underway, with games coming thick and fast. For Belfast Giants this has meant a lot of games against their usual trio of Scottish opponents in the Challenge Cup,…
iPhone Wallpaper No. 25: Wild Horses In Mist
Two horses standing in fog on a flat plain, close enough to read and no closer. Free, in light and dark, at iPhone size.
Darker Days and the Hastings Weird
I mentioned back on the very first day of this year that my friend Scott Wood and I were planning on setting up something around the “Hastings Weird”: There are some existing loose local…
My Perfect Console: The games that didn't make the list
Why Mario Kart 64 and a stolen Sonic 2 prototype almost made it
Animal Spirits: It’s a Bloodbath
On today's show we discuss AI debt concerns, Coreweave's Rocky IV moment, the 2020s appetite for risk, the Railway boom analogy, carnage under the surface of the stock market, the average stock this…
Looking For Happiness In All The Wrong Places
Make Happiness the object of pursuit and it leads to a wild goose chase. – Nathaniel Hawthorne Finding bliss is centers around not looking for it. Pursuing feelings is a road to nowhere.…
Do proponents know what “reliably controlled testing” for authorship means? (Part 2)
Today’s blog post is a continuation of a discussion about the meaning of reliably controlled testing. Last time, I talked about the history of FC and critics’ concerns that the FC-generated messages…
Would You Like a Side of Roundup with That?
Among all the topics I’ve researched for this blog, one that fascinates me most (well, at least in the top ten), is the common substances that either overcome antibiotic resistance or contribute to…
Keeping Scrapers Out
Letting humans into the web, keeping scrapers out.
[EN] Python Version Comparison: 3.15 Down to 3.7 — What\
A reverse-chronological comparison of every Python release from 3.15 back to 3.7. Covers what each version introduced, with links to PEPs and official documentation.
#TBR Challenge – The Hunt: All-New Wolverine Vol. 1: The Four Sisters
All-New Wolverine Vol. 1: The Four Sisters by Tom Taylor, David Lopez, and David Navarrot collects the first six issues of this comic about X-23/Laura Kinney, who was cloned from Logan/Wolverine of…
Act One: A Century in the Making
Eric Pickersgill is in the book Act One: A Century in the Making, with an exhibition opening October 22 in Queens and a panel and book signing October 23 in Brooklyn.
Design Hireling: Your Rate
How much do you charge per hour (and project) for freelance work?
The language that says no
Your agent will cut a corner tonight. Whether that corner ships depends on the language you gave it.
Ground Drones Hit the Frontlines in Ukraine
The Ukrainians have introduced ground drones to the battlefield, attacking Russian positions and disrupting logistics. This is yet another innovation emerging from this war that is shaking up how…
You could do it alone
Better tools make it possible to build more alone. That doesn’t make a good partnership less worth finding.
How I decide which Python and Django versions I want to support
How I decide which Python and Django versions I want to support A recent post on Mastodon got me thinking about what my philosophy for dropping support for old versions of Python and Django is.…
Booknotes 5.25
Dead Wake, by Erik Larson, published 2015, history, 440 pages. Really good, though my interest in ever going on a cruise may have plummeted. The conjecture toward the end about a possible and kind of…
Booknotes 5.24
Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead, by K. J. Parker, published 2026, fantasy, 430 pages. Earthy bits aside, I enjoyed it, as I typically do with Parker’s books. Most of his (at least those I’ve…
Joyful Linux Mint
In which I talk about using Linux Mint and the tweaks I have made for a more joyful computing experience.
Continuity Is Not an Archive
Keeping a system useful can erase evidence of its earlier states as maintenance replaces obsolete arrangements.
Double Down On Love
When you sense hatred and negativity in people and the world, that's exactly when you need to double down on[...]
Don't Be a Patriot at Planet Fitness in Cudahy....
Some dude got tossed out of Planet Fitness in Cudahy (WI) , for wearing a jacket saying "Protect ICE, Protect the Country." Reminder: Planet Fitness also supports tranny men in women's locker…
AI changed the economics of research. Most research teams haven't caught up.
Two weeks ago I promised to close the agentic series, UXR for AI-native teams, with one last post on agents. Then I got into a discussion about democratization that I couldn't stop thinking…
Elixir clusters, less infrastructure, more talking
If you know me, you know I love Elixir. The language is beautiful and LLMs are good at writing it. The bigger reason is that it takes away the need for a lot of other things you may instinctively…
more shavings........
Been sleeping late and today I woke up just before 0800. Last night was peaceful too. I barely coughed at all and I was only entered in one toilet trot race. I coughed off an on all day but nowhere…
Forest, trees, wetland
The Aspen Grove, pretty much pruned by Barry Beaver and the July 1st windstorm!With enough windfall, I can see across the wetland.He is making progress on the oak tree...Barry's new lodge,…
● Recently played
Make The Most Of It (2023) - New Found Glory; pop-punk Season Of Glass (2015) - GFRIEND; k-pop Flower Bud (2015) - GFRIEND; k-pop SNOWFLAKE (2016) - GFRIEND; k-pop LOL (2016) - GFRIEND; k-pop THE…
Infanterie Regiment von Bose
The 250th anniversary of the battle of White Plains is nearly upon us! This weekend not only will over 1500 revolutionary war reenactors converge for the largest event in decades, but the German…
The Ocean is Unforgiving: Part 2
21 October 2026: Part 2 of The Ocean is Unforgiving When You Build Your House on Sand When I was a teenager my family used to vacation on the beach at Nags Head, North Carolina in cottages across the…
One-watt LED Thermal Pad Reflow: Nope
What looks like melted solder is really an adhesive layer
Not All Eyes are the Same, Pt. I
Scout ©2018 Pearl of Light, DeviantArt You stand on a tall hill, bow in hand, gazing at the valley below and searching for your mark. The air is crisp, and dawn’s silver mists have retreated from the…
Ten minutes now, two hundred minutes saved
An idea that we discussed recently that stuck with me: ten extra minutes spent making sure what you send is concise and clear can save the organization two hundred minutes. The math is simple. Send…
Almost Wordless Wednesday: The Music Scene
Part One: Martin Guitar Factory, Nazareth PA <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6lW1mWVRLKNtfM-EkpIaQw9ZqssFOgkaWFKOtEIcM6WgwnB1NOav9iLwgMegrmcVH_PMEwKqLtSwLtpBp5adZT…
Tabard Inn History: Sold in 1927, Bought Back in 1930
The Tabard Inn's founder sold it in 1927, then bought it back at a 1930 foreclosure auction for $2,000. Deeds, plats and census records tell the story. The post Tabard Inn History: Sold in 1927,…
Wednesday 21st October 2026
9720/21639OK, my job does come with some pretty cool treats. Not often two days in a row, but sometimes. So hot on the heels of visiting the actual set of Horrible Histories, I got to interview…
Lessons in incomprehension
Jason Kratz wrote a rebuttal to my arguments against the precedent set by Aaron Parecki’s decision to use AI in his work on the IndieWeb and his method of defending it. It is a poor rebuttal for…
Four ways to install Nix in GitHub Actions
To run Nix in GitHub Actions, the default CI runner needs Nix installed first. Here are some popular alternatives for pre-made CI actions that do this: - uses: cachix/install-nix-action@v31 - uses:…
On writing humanly
Recently I’ve been heavily engaged in AI-assisted scientific research. While the large language models are generally impressive, their behaviors outside of coding and running research experiments…
Bradel Binding Using Scraps
I'm going on holiday next week, and I've made a little book my kids can use as a doodle book. My main goal was to use left over material from previous projects, and to just spend my time on it. I did…
godot starter kits
https://kenney.nl/starter-kits Generous contribution of 6 game skeletons in Godot. Impressive what one person can accomplish these days! I've made 6 open-source @godotengine.org projects perfect for…
Horror delight
The evening light has changed. After work, it shines an amber glow across spindly seedheads. Shadows stretch. Coppery leaves fall slowly to the ground. At the beginning of October, our son announced…
Kenya: Paul Mackenzie Found Guilty of 191 Murders as Questions Mount over Failures by Authorities
Prof HAKIZIMANA Maurice Kenyan preacher Paul Mackenzie and 28 co-defendants were found guilty on Monday, October 19, of murdering 191 people, including 190 children, in the Shakahola mass graves…